0:00:02 > 0:00:05Welcome to the revolution. On this week's 20th Century Classics at the Proms,
0:00:05 > 0:00:07music that's played a starring role in one of the
0:00:07 > 0:00:10world's biggest political and ideological conflicts -
0:00:10 > 0:00:14works by Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich -
0:00:14 > 0:00:15Soviet composers.
0:00:15 > 0:00:19They're both masterpieces that say and mean different things -
0:00:19 > 0:00:22sometimes flat-out contradictory things -
0:00:22 > 0:00:24all at the same time.
0:00:24 > 0:00:27And they both sound the eternal truth behind all revolutions -
0:00:27 > 0:00:30whether they're social, ideological or musical.
0:00:30 > 0:00:33That it's all just a bit of history repeating -
0:00:33 > 0:00:36sometimes victoriously, sometimes vainly,
0:00:36 > 0:00:39but always, in Prokofiev's Second Violin Concerto and
0:00:39 > 0:00:41Shostakovich's Eleventh Symphony,
0:00:41 > 0:00:45music of shattering, moving, inescapable power.
0:01:14 > 0:01:18In around half an hour or so, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales
0:01:18 > 0:01:20and their Chief Conductor, Thomas Sondergard,
0:01:20 > 0:01:22will launch themselves at the
0:01:22 > 0:01:25huge historical canvas of Shostakovich's Eleventh Symphony -
0:01:25 > 0:01:27The Year 1905.
0:01:27 > 0:01:31But we start with Prokofiev's Second Violin Concerto.
0:01:31 > 0:01:36This is a work written in 1935 in Western Europe, but full of longing
0:01:36 > 0:01:39and nostalgia for the Russian motherland where Prokofiev would
0:01:39 > 0:01:41permanently return the following year.
0:01:41 > 0:01:42But by that stage,
0:01:42 > 0:01:46Prokofiev was a completely different composer from the iconoclastic,
0:01:46 > 0:01:49dissonance-loving firebrand he'd been when he'd left Russia
0:01:49 > 0:01:53soon after the revolution of 1917 to pursue his career abroad.
0:01:53 > 0:01:57In fact, his biggest project of 1935 was a ballet,
0:01:57 > 0:02:01Romeo and Juliet, that's chock-full of unforgettable tunes
0:02:01 > 0:02:03composed because Prokofiev wanted them to go straight
0:02:03 > 0:02:06to the hearts of his listeners.
0:02:06 > 0:02:11Then, as now, where would Lord Sugar and all of those apprentices be
0:02:11 > 0:02:15were it not for the Dance Of The Knights from Romeo and Juliet?
0:02:15 > 0:02:20MUSIC: "Dance Of The Knights" by Sergei Prokofiev
0:02:20 > 0:02:23This was an aesthetic that fitted with the diktats
0:02:23 > 0:02:27of Stalin's Soviet Realism and in fact, Prokofiev himself
0:02:27 > 0:02:31wrote an essay in 1934 in which he said that truly great Soviet music
0:02:31 > 0:02:34"ought to correspond, both in form and in content,
0:02:34 > 0:02:36"to the grandeur of the epoch."
0:02:36 > 0:02:40It would also, abroad, "reveal our true selves."
0:02:40 > 0:02:42The music ought to be primarily melodious
0:02:42 > 0:02:45and should express a new kind of simplicity.
0:02:47 > 0:02:50Of course, Prokofiev was returning to Russia
0:02:50 > 0:02:53straight into the grimmest years of Stalin's regime
0:02:53 > 0:02:57where he, like everyone else, would have to dodge ideological bullets.
0:02:57 > 0:03:00But if you hear the sunniness of the melodies in the
0:03:00 > 0:03:02Second Violin Concerto, it is as if
0:03:02 > 0:03:04all of that historical context disappears.
0:03:04 > 0:03:06This is music, like Romeo and Juliet,
0:03:06 > 0:03:08that's once heard, never forgotten.
0:03:08 > 0:03:11Whether it's the sinewy melody that the work starts with,
0:03:11 > 0:03:14the energy of the finale or, especially,
0:03:14 > 0:03:16the toy-like, central slow movement -
0:03:16 > 0:03:19pizzicato strings, interjections from bassoons,
0:03:19 > 0:03:22clarinet and then, for the soloist, one of the most simple,
0:03:22 > 0:03:26heartfelt melodies that any 20th-century composer ever imagined.
0:03:28 > 0:03:31APPLAUSE
0:03:31 > 0:03:34Here at the Proms then - British violinist Daniel Hope
0:03:34 > 0:03:36is the soloist at the Royal Albert Hall
0:03:36 > 0:03:39and Thomas Sondergard conducts the BBC National Orchestra of Wales
0:03:39 > 0:03:42in Prokofiev's Second Violin Concerto.
0:30:22 > 0:30:25APPLAUSE
0:30:36 > 0:30:39Sergei Prokofiev's Second Violin Concerto at the Proms.
0:30:39 > 0:30:42Daniel Hope was the soloist at the Royal Albert Hall.
0:30:42 > 0:30:44And the BBC National Orchestra of Wales was
0:30:44 > 0:30:46conducted by Thomas Sondergard.
0:30:49 > 0:30:54Despite Prokofiev's embrace of melody and simplicity in that piece,
0:30:54 > 0:30:56more than a decade after the premiere of
0:30:56 > 0:30:58The Second Violin Concerto, he was to fall foul
0:30:58 > 0:31:02of a Communist Party decree condemning formalism in music.
0:31:02 > 0:31:06Poignantly, Prokofiev died on the very same day that Stalin's
0:31:06 > 0:31:10death was announced, in March 1953.
0:31:10 > 0:31:15Back at the time of Prokofiev's return to the USSR in 1936,
0:31:15 > 0:31:19Dmitri Shostakovich, a generation younger and, until then, wunderkind
0:31:19 > 0:31:23of the communist regime, had suddenly become persona non grata.
0:31:23 > 0:31:26Stalin himself had attended Shostakovich's opera
0:31:26 > 0:31:29Lady Macbeth Of Mtsensk, and subsequently the piece
0:31:29 > 0:31:33was denounced as "muddle instead of music."
0:31:33 > 0:31:35Two decades later, in 1957,
0:31:35 > 0:31:40a year after Khrushchev had given a speech denouncing Stalin's legacy
0:31:40 > 0:31:44and heralding a period of relative cultural freedom,
0:31:44 > 0:31:47Shostakovich's Eleventh Symphony premiered in Moscow.
0:31:47 > 0:31:50Now this is the piece written on a precipice of music,
0:31:50 > 0:31:54political and poetic meaning. Its subtitle, The Year 1905,
0:31:54 > 0:31:57suggests that it's a programmatic or even cinematic
0:31:57 > 0:32:00recreation of the 9th January 1905,
0:32:00 > 0:32:03when a peaceful demonstration of 150,000 people,
0:32:03 > 0:32:06outside the Winter Palace in St Petersburg,
0:32:06 > 0:32:09was murderously crushed by the Tsar's Cossacks.
0:32:11 > 0:32:14And these are events that the Shostakovich family knew well.
0:32:14 > 0:32:18Shostakovich's father was there in the crowd that day,
0:32:18 > 0:32:20a year before his son was born.
0:32:20 > 0:32:23And the young Dmitri grew up with stories of what the Russians
0:32:23 > 0:32:25call Bloody Sunday.
0:32:25 > 0:32:28Shostakovich quotes and uses folk tunes
0:32:28 > 0:32:31and revolutionary songs to give voice to the people's struggle.
0:32:31 > 0:32:35In the first movement, you'll hear the melodies of two prison songs,
0:32:35 > 0:32:37both bleak emblems of incarceration.
0:32:37 > 0:32:40The second movement depicts the massacre itself.
0:32:40 > 0:32:45And it ends with one of the most startling sound images that
0:32:45 > 0:32:48Shostakovich ever imagined from an orchestra.
0:32:48 > 0:32:52After the rifles, a violent hammering of brass
0:32:52 > 0:32:55and percussion into the crowd, Shostakovich suddenly jump cuts
0:32:55 > 0:32:59to a scene of utter emptiness and desolation.
0:32:59 > 0:33:01Ghostly high strings and celesta.
0:33:01 > 0:33:04A version of the music we heard right at the start of the symphony.
0:33:04 > 0:33:09But now, the square, snow-covered, is littered with bodies.
0:33:09 > 0:33:12The third movement is an in memoriam, an adagio slow movement.
0:33:12 > 0:33:14And the final movement,
0:33:14 > 0:33:16which includes the melody Rage You Tyrants,
0:33:16 > 0:33:19ends with the tumultuous and apparently victorious
0:33:19 > 0:33:23pealing of bells and a violent onslaught of percussion.
0:33:23 > 0:33:25Surely the people's onward march to freedom
0:33:25 > 0:33:28away from the shackles of the oppressor.
0:33:31 > 0:33:35But which oppressor? The Tsar or Soviet regime?
0:33:35 > 0:33:39For some in the audience, the references weren't just about 1905
0:33:39 > 0:33:42but about what had happened the year before, 1956,
0:33:42 > 0:33:47when the Soviet regime had brutally put down the Hungarian uprising.
0:33:47 > 0:33:49Lev Lebedinsky, the musicologist, was quite clear.
0:33:49 > 0:33:52The Eleventh Symphony was a thoroughly contemporary work,
0:33:52 > 0:33:56he said, camouflaged out of necessity with an historic programme.
0:33:56 > 0:34:00Camouflaged so successfully that the symphony won a Lenin Prize.
0:34:00 > 0:34:03And other music lovers heard in it only empty
0:34:03 > 0:34:05quotations of revolutionary songs.
0:34:05 > 0:34:08He sold himself down the river, they said about Shostakovich,
0:34:08 > 0:34:09to please the regime.
0:34:09 > 0:34:11Shostakovich himself is on record saying that
0:34:11 > 0:34:14patriotism is a noble goal for music.
0:34:14 > 0:34:19Here he is in 1974, along with his son, the conductor Maxim.
0:34:20 > 0:34:23When a person listens to this kind of music,
0:34:23 > 0:34:27naturally it plunges him into the world of this composer.
0:34:27 > 0:34:30A composer who has something to say.
0:34:30 > 0:34:33He goes away, becoming, as it were, a participant in the experience
0:34:33 > 0:34:36which the composer wishes to put over in the work in question.
0:34:36 > 0:34:39HE SPEAKS RUSSIAN
0:34:39 > 0:34:42This would indicate that I have succeeded,
0:34:42 > 0:34:46to some extent, in portraying patriotism in my music.
0:34:46 > 0:34:50Which is, has been and always will be my aim.
0:34:50 > 0:34:54For no musical work can exist without it.
0:34:54 > 0:34:56Beethoven, for example,
0:34:56 > 0:34:59could hardly have written his great symphonies unless he'd had
0:34:59 > 0:35:03patriotism, unless he'd had progressive thoughts and opinions.
0:35:03 > 0:35:06Or for that matter, Schubert, Schumann,
0:35:06 > 0:35:08Mussorgsky, Glinka, Tchaikovsky.
0:35:10 > 0:35:13Whether a composer always succeeds in speaking in the name
0:35:13 > 0:35:16of his people, I'm not sure.
0:35:16 > 0:35:19But I personally always strive to do so.
0:35:19 > 0:35:21I think a composer must.
0:35:21 > 0:35:24I do think my duty is to speak for the people.
0:35:26 > 0:35:30Shostakovich's music speaks to people in many different ways.
0:35:30 > 0:35:35In September of 1957, his friend, the great poet Anna Akhmatova,
0:35:35 > 0:35:37wrote a poem called Music.
0:35:37 > 0:35:38WOMAN READS RUSSIAN POEM
0:35:42 > 0:35:45It shines with a miraculous light
0:35:45 > 0:35:48Revealing to the eye the cutting of facets
0:35:48 > 0:35:50It alone speaks to me
0:35:50 > 0:35:53When others are too scared to come near
0:35:53 > 0:35:56When the last friend turned his back
0:35:56 > 0:35:58It was with me in my grave
0:35:58 > 0:36:00As if a thunderstorm sang
0:36:00 > 0:36:02Or all the flowers spoke.
0:36:05 > 0:36:07Music, Shostakovich's music,
0:36:07 > 0:36:11is both revelation and consolation for Akhmatova.
0:36:11 > 0:36:14Listeners like her heard in it a kind of emotional
0:36:14 > 0:36:16truth-telling during the Soviet regime
0:36:16 > 0:36:18that words just couldn't dare to achieve
0:36:18 > 0:36:21on so public a scale as big new symphony.
0:36:21 > 0:36:23And after the premiere of the Eleventh Symphony,
0:36:23 > 0:36:25just a month after writing that poem,
0:36:25 > 0:36:28Akhmatova knew what the symphony meant to her.
0:36:28 > 0:36:29Those songs, she said,
0:36:29 > 0:36:33were like white birds flying against a terrible black sky.
0:36:34 > 0:36:38MUSIC: "The Eleventh Symphony" by Dmitri Shostakovich
0:36:42 > 0:36:44APPLAUSE
0:36:44 > 0:36:48Here is Shostakovich's Eleventh Symphony (The Year 1905) at the Proms.
0:36:48 > 0:36:51Thomas Sondergard conducts the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.
0:36:51 > 0:36:55You can follow my Twitter guide to the symphony
0:36:55 > 0:36:58alongside the performance - #shostakovich @bbcproms.
0:37:15 > 0:37:19MUSIC: "The Eleventh Symphony (The Year 1905)" by Dmitri Shostakovich
1:37:52 > 1:37:55WILD APPLAUSE
1:38:07 > 1:38:10CHEERING
1:38:15 > 1:38:19Shostakovich's Eleventh Symphony (The Year 1905) at the Proms.
1:38:19 > 1:38:23Thomas Sondergard conducted the BBC National Orchestra of Wales
1:38:23 > 1:38:25at the Royal Albert Hall.
1:38:28 > 1:38:30Shostakovich was quoted as saying,
1:38:30 > 1:38:33"I wanted to show this recurrence, that many things repeat
1:38:33 > 1:38:36"themselves in Russian history, in the Eleventh Symphony.
1:38:36 > 1:38:40"I wrote it in 1957 and it deals with contemporary themes,
1:38:40 > 1:38:43"even though it's called 1905.
1:38:43 > 1:38:46"It's about the people who have stopped believing
1:38:46 > 1:38:49"because the cup of evil has run over."
1:38:50 > 1:38:53You don't have to look far to see that cycle of revolutionary
1:38:53 > 1:38:56history repeating itself again and again.
1:38:56 > 1:38:59Shostakovich's symphony never stops resonating.
1:38:59 > 1:39:03Just like those heroic bells that chime violently
1:39:03 > 1:39:06against tyranny at the end of the final movement.
1:39:06 > 1:39:08APPLAUSE CONTINUES
1:39:15 > 1:39:17That's all for this Sunday.
1:39:17 > 1:39:20Every Prom is live on BBC Radio Three.
1:39:20 > 1:39:23The next televised Prom is on Thursday on BBC Four,
1:39:23 > 1:39:25bringing us Berlioz and Beethoven.
1:39:25 > 1:39:29I'm back in a fortnight on BBC Four with the 21st century at this
1:39:29 > 1:39:32year's Proms - celebrating the very newest possible music -
1:39:32 > 1:39:34from the Royal Albert Hall.
1:39:34 > 1:39:37Joy boxes, turning points, dance suites and even Doctor Who -
1:39:37 > 1:39:41they'll all be here in a fortnight. Nostrovia.
1:39:43 > 1:39:47MUSIC: "Kalinka" by Balalaika Ensemble Wolga
1:40:17 > 1:40:20Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd